The remedy was also unpleasant. The infection was near his belt line, and doctors produced what appeared to Rosenbaum to be a needle about the size of a bazooka. Even more, the mixed martial artist from northwest Indiana, who has fought as an amateur or professional a total of 19 times, is scared of needles.

“Weird,” he said, “because I’m covered in tattoos.”

The experience cost the 22-year-old a shot at an upcoming 125-pound fight in Brazil and has left him recovering. But in planning his return to training, Rosenbaum is boosted by the motivation that he once lost a chance to finish his promising high school wrestling career – and that he has now committed himself as fully as possible to MMA, even teaching at the gym and becoming a dietician and nutritionist as well.

Rosenbaum finds himself in a spot not unusual in the MMA world: A promising fighter suffers an injury that costs him a fight for which he has sacrificed time, energy and pain in preparation. In Rosenbaum’s case, that includes a wake-up call at 3:30 a.m. each morning for his job in Chicago and then training in the evening after work.

But Rosenbaum is confident that he will soon acquire another fight and overcome two razor-thin losses in his past three fights with the support of training partners such as Eddie Wineland and John Kolosci at LA Boxing in Merrillville, Ind., not far from his home in Crown Point.

“I just believe that everything happens for a reason,” Rosenbaum said. “I would’ve loved to fight in Brazil, but it didn’t happen. Now I just have to go back to what I love doing, training and learning, and something good will happen for me.”

Lost wrestling, found MMA

Rosenbaum was born in California but moved with his family to Indiana when he was very young. By 5 years old, his father’s interest in sports helped Rosenbaum get started in wrestling, and he later split his time between that and football.

There were six kids in his family, some of them step- of half-siblings. One stepbrother was separated from Rosenbaum in age by just three months, and they shared a commitment to wrestling, which helped both of them in training and competition.

By the time he started high school, Rosenbaum chose wrestling over football in part because of his size, and the sport seemed to be his future. But things didn’t exactly turn out that way.

It started well for him as a freshman, as he wrestled at 119 pounds and won more than 30 matches before losing a state semifinal match to the eventual state champion. Things got more complicated as a sophomore, when coaches asked him to drop to 112 pounds so his stepbrother could move up to 119.

He made the sacrifice, but his feelings for wrestling changed.

“It just got to be more like a job than something that was fun,” he said. “We had wrestled for so much of the year for so long that it just stopped being something I enjoyed doing.”

His record dropped significantly as a sophomore, and as a junior some personal issues caused him more distraction, and he left the team. His on-the-go personality that has helped him with mixing work with training didn’t serve him well with wrestling out of his life because he needed something to do.

He knew about MMA, but he had never really liked fighting. He avoided it, actually. But needing to fill his non-school time as a high school senior, Rosenbaum went looking for a training opportunity.

“My dad likes to say that MMA saved me,” Rosenbaum said.

A quick career

Rosenbaum had been training at the Merrillville gym for just a few months when Kolosci mentioned that he had already set up a fight.

“He said my wrestling was already good enough, especially to compete in amateur fights,” Rosenbaum said. “I was just young, so I said, ‘OK, whatever you think.'”

He was, indeed, still young. For the first part of his amateur career, Rosenbaum was still a high school senior stung by the fact that his wrestling career didn’t go as he had planned. But using his everything-happens-for-a-reason philosophy, he said he tried to accept it and move on.

At first, that meant finding pockets of trouble with too much time on his hands. His move to MMA stymied that.

“It was the best thing that could’ve happened to me,” he said of beginning an MMA career.

And he responded with success. Helped by training with Wineland, who was on his way to a WEC and UFC career, and support from the experienced Kolosci, who kept finding him new opportunities, Rosenbaum went 11-1 as an amateur.

Local promoters noticed the young fighter, and he made his professional debut in June 2010. He started 4-1 as a pro before suffering two split-decision losses in his past three fights, which motivated him more for his upcoming trip to Brazil.

Then came a staph infection, a skin infection, a long needle to help the condition and a period of recovery. Rosenbaum quickly returned to his job repairing train brakes and teaching at the gym. His challenge is rebounding from the disappointment any fighter faces when an upcoming fight is changed because of illness or injury.

He’s confident that he will be ready for his next fight, whatever it may be.

“Yeah, it’s too bad that didn’t happen,” he said, “but it just means look forward to the next thing.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel pens “Fight Path” each week. The column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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